


four seasons

by raregoose



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Growing Up Together, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 04:42:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raregoose/pseuds/raregoose
Summary: We left home when we were eighteen.We fell in love when we were seventeen.We knew each other better than ourselves when we were sixteen.We met when we were fifteen.





	four seasons

iv.

She is lying on my left arm; both are asleep. I try to wiggle my fingers and only get the crinkling feedback-esque feeling. She’s in my t-shirt and her volleyball spandex, a mish-mashed outfit that she picked out when she decided it was “way too hot for real pants”. The small of my back sweats against the sheets, and I curse the sun for its inclination to bake the desert and those of us unlucky enough to live in it. 

I wiggle again, and this time she wakes up. It’s a shame; I was just about to give up on complaining and try to fall asleep with her. 

“Hi,” I murmur against her shoulder. She smiles, a lazy early morning smile that I love. I am gifted with a peck on the nose as she begins to move, sweeping her long hair up off her neck and stretching her legs.

She rolls off my arm and I admit that at least that’s a good part of her waking up.

She lies still on the bed, staring emptily at the ceiling. In the corner, where it converges with both walls, a fly struggles to escape a spider’s web.

“Y’know,” she says, and I turn to peer at her. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Of course I know.” I turn away, pouting. She doesn’t respond to my bitter tone, and we lie there in silence. I face her again. “How about one final trip to Scoops? I’ll pay.” The corner of her lip quirks up and she brushes a dark lock from my brow. That is answer enough.

We get dressed slowly, and the morning sun streams through the blinds. The heat of the August day is inescapable, and it's miserable to sweat through the days and our clothes.

Yet, when she grabs my hand, I don't want it to end.

iii.

We leave school late and watch the flowers bloom in the early evening's light. Spring is the only time of the year the desert seems even remotely alive.

She's being coy, and plucks two budding flowers, offering one to me complete with a deep bow. I laugh, and nestle her gift into my hair. She's watching me with this dazed look, her face bright red. She fumbles with her fingers as she pokes the stem of her own flower through her ponytail, her most common hairstyle now that it’s just long enough to all fit into the holder. I glance at her lips quickly then look away, flushing. Inside, my stomach is squirming; I can't decide if its gurgling is nervous or excited.

Her hand sways cautiously next to mine, our fingers brushing like a question.

We reach my driveway in a pregnant silence. I don't say anything, but instead just reach slowly and lace my fingers with hers, and press a soft kiss to her mouth. The shade of red on her cheeks darkens. The sun is going down, freeing us of the suffocating heat if only for a few hours, and darkness falls on the blooming flowers of spring. There in the dusk of the neighborhood road, we blossom.

ii.

She has a big bay window, my favorite place in her house. We're sitting side by side, cross-legged, watching the desert and praying for snow.

The hot chocolate might be overdoing it; it’s sixty degrees out and sunny.

The silence is comfortable. I can see her thick blonde bob out of the corner of my eye, how it kinks in different directions, untameable. She hums a song, that one the radios won’t stop playing, the one that makes my mother grumble and turn it off.

After a moment, with a sly smile, accentuated by the evidence of her experimentation with lipstick, she puts her drink down and, now holding a pen, holds her hand out. She taps the backs of her fingers on my forearm; in response I shift to hold my mug in one hand and hold out my other arm for her imminent drawing.

She, with a firm grip, holds my arm steady in a way that shields my view, and draws on its smooth underside. I don’t say a thing; I never need to.

Her hand slips off my arm. It is a small shaky yin yang. I release a breath that is almost a laugh, almost a sigh. Sticking her tongue out at me, she rocks a little back and forth, happy to see me smile.

There is something so easy, so simple about everything in these days. I listen to her ramble for hours about classes and volleyball and our other friends. I am happy when we are together, and that’s all I need to be. 

Though the nights are dark and the land empty, my life feels full and bright, and the mere thought of complication hardly passes me by. Months later, winter ends, and again we are reborn.

i.

I meet a girl on the first day of freshman year in math class. She picks up my water bottle when I accidentally knock it over, then she smiles brightly at the gym bag I stuff it in.

“Are you trying out for volleyball? Wait, let me guess: you play blocker!” Her hair floats around her face in a halo, bright and flaxen, tiny waves looking ready to fly away any moment.

I nod. Her voice is loud; everyone in class is sizing up my clownish height and I sink a little in my chair.

She proceeds to discuss how she’s played her whole life and she’s so excited to finally get to try out for the girls’ team here and she plays outside hitter and she’s been lifting weights this summer to get more power and she thinks she’ll at least make the freshman level team because she’s tall (almost as tall as me, actually, which is a surprise) and she heard the coach is really nice and she bets that I’ll make the team also and she knows another girl in our grade who’s really good whose sister is the captain of the varsity team.

Part of me, years before I ever realize it, is already in love with her.

At the end of class, she scribbles her phone number on my arm in Sharpie- “to check our answers tonight”-and promises to show me around town when I offhandedly mention that I’ve just moved here.

“Scoops is the best place for ice cream in the state,” she asserts. 

“You’ll have to take me sometime.” I respond with a half smile and a wiggled-finger goodbye wave as I stumble off to my next class, trying to deduce my schedule and the maze of halls. When I stumble home later that afternoon, crunching through autumn leaves, only in passing do I notice the spider weaving her web on a bare branch, threading strands together in an inexplicable dance.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! I've never posted original fic on here and I've been horribly nervous about doing so but I wrote this ~3ish years ago and knew I wasn't going to edit it any more so I thought it'd be a good thing to try!
> 
> These characters and their world have been sitting around in my brain for almost 5 years now and I really want to try writing/posting more original stuff even tho it's scary!
> 
> you can find me on tumblr and/or twitter @raregoose


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